by Kylie Logan
“You want to give that picture to me instead?”
Her hands shaking, she reached for the cookbook she’d been holding when I burst into the kitchen. “I . . .” Her voice quivered. She cleared her throat. “I found the photo when I was looking for—”
“A ponytail holder. Yeah, I know that, too.”
“It’s . . .” Dolly flipped open the cookbook to a page near the back and slipped out a photograph. “It was just sitting there and I figured no one even knew about it and no one would miss it, and—”
“And so you decided to steal it.”
Why did I have the feeling she’d never thought of it that way?
That would explain why Dolly’s cheeks went back to being as pale as they were pre-oxygen. “Only I didn’t steal it, did I? Because here it still is.” This particular bit of logic was supposed to soften my heart.
It didn’t work.
When she handed over the picture, Dolly’s bottom lip trembled.
I stepped back and took a close look at the photograph with a single, smiling woman in it.
From the looks of the clothing—
I turned the picture in my hands, the better to get rid of the glare and take a better gander.
The picture was taken from maybe ten feet away, but there was no mistaking Meghan Cohan. From the little hints provided by the clothes she was wearing—hoop earrings, a fedora, and a pair of tight pants with a logo on the butt—I’d say the photo was taken maybe sixteen or seventeen years earlier.
Back when Meghan Cohan didn’t exist, and Tina Moretti was a kid from nowhere with an almost-pretty face and dreams as big as the whole, wide world.
“It’s not exactly exciting. Or interesting. Meghan, standing near a park bench.” I squinted and looked more closely at the buildings in the background. “In some big city.”
Dolly shrugged. “I didn’t think it was anything earthshaking, either, but when I told that reporter about it, when I told him it looked old and that I was pretty sure it was a picture of Meghan before she got really famous, well, that’s when he said he was interested. See . . .” She leaned over and pointed at Meghan’s smiling face. “It must have been before she had her lips done. And her chin. See her chin? By the time she made None Are Waiting, Meghan’s chin was more sculpted and her lips were plumper.”
“And that reporter thought this picture was news?”
“Everything about Meghan is news.” Nothing would ever convince Dolly otherwise. “He was willing to pay me a thousand dollars for the photo. A thousand dollars! But then this morning you told me you knew about the picture of the car and the picture of the freezer door, and I got upset, and I walked out, and . . .”
“And you figured the only way you could get back in here to get the picture was to start a bit of a fire, wait for everyone to leave the building, then sneak inside and grab the photograph.”
As if she couldn’t have put it better herself, she nodded and reminded me, “A thousand dollars is a lot of money!”
“Is it worth a thousand dollars to sell out your employer and the people who thought you were a friend?”
Her eyes glistened with tears. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t have to.”
Inez picked that moment to scurry into the kitchen with the pizza orders for the firefighters. I pointed to the nearest stool, told Dolly to stay put, and helped chop mushrooms and peppers and search for a can of pineapple, because one of the firefighters had requested that on his pizza. Another of the men wanted tuna on his. I may be opinionated, but I am not judgmental, so I kept my mouth shut about that particular culinary request. I opened the can of tuna, handed it off to George, and once the pizzas were popped in the oven, I got back to the matter at hand.
I fully expected to ask Dolly why she was so desperate for money, but as it turned out, I didn’t need to.
“Tuna!” The idea hit, and I slapped the counter, then pointed a finger at Dolly. “You did it for the tuna!”
She had no idea what I was talking about, and hey, who could blame her?
“Just Kitten,” I said, watching her face as I spoke the words and knowing I hit a nerve.
Color washed over Dolly’s cheeks and blotched her chin. As if she were the one with whiskers, her nose twitched. Her eyes cascaded tears.
“Do you have any idea how expensive it is to provide a good home to cats?” she wailed.
“I have an idea that if you had fewer cats, it would be easier and less expensive to take care of them.”
“Yes. Yes. Of course.” She nodded like a bobblehead. “That’s how it started. That’s how it always starts. With just a few. I started with Mittens and Buffy. Then Tabitha came along, and Grant, and Lester and . . .” Her chest heaved. “There are so many poor kitties that need homes, and I took them in and I meant to find them places to live and send them on. But I love them, Laurel. I love all of them so much I could never get rid of any of them! And every time I see another one, or I hear there are more somewhere with no one to love them and care for them, I pick them up, and I take them in. That’s what I was doing the night Meghan was murdered. There was a call that went out to rescue groups about a litter that was found under a bridge. I didn’t think . . . If I told you, I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“So that’s why you sold the pictures to the paparazzi. And why you’re trying to sell Terminal silverware on the Internet. You need money to keep the rescue going. Not that it’s much of a rescue since you’re keeping all the cats yourself.”
“Those poor kitties.” Dolly sobbed. “Those poor, poor kitties.”
Since there wasn’t much I could say, it was a good thing Declan and Inez showed up to pick up the pizza orders. While they were at it, they put in orders—all gratis, of course—for everyone who’d been in the restaurant when the smoke alarms went off and had decided to come back in. Just as I’d hoped, seeing the firefighters in there enjoying dinner erased their worries about any more emergencies.
“Can’t have too many hands helping out.” Declan’s mom, Ellen, sailed into the kitchen and grabbed a pizza, too. On her way by, she managed to give me a one-armed hug. “You did great during the crisis. You all did great.”
We had, and if nothing else, I suppose that was one thing the evening proved. The staff at the Terminal—minus Dolly, of course, and plus Declan, since he wasn’t officially staff—worked like a well-oiled machine.
After all the angst of the evening, the thought caused a curl of warmth inside me. The next time Declan hurried by, I gave him a smile.
“What?” He smiled back.
“Just feeling grateful.” I glanced at Dolly, who was still weeping quietly, then grabbed the cookbook where she’d tucked the old photo. “This is what the whole thing was all about,” I told him. “Dolly trying to get this old picture of Meghan so she could sell it. It’s crazy.”
His eyes narrowed, he stepped back. “You don’t suppose that photograph was what Meghan was looking for when she came to the Terminal, do you?”
I’d been so busy with the emergency and its aftermath, I hadn’t had a chance to think about it.
Now I did, and I knew the answer. “No way. Why would she go through all that trouble to find an old picture of herself? Unless . . .”
As if we’d choreographed it, Declan and I both slid a look at the cookbook at the exact same time.
“That book wasn’t with the other books,” I told him. “I put it away in a drawer. The day I made the tagliatelle. So when Meghan was here—”
“She couldn’t have looked in that book.”
“Which is why she never found the photograph.”
“Except you’re right, why would she want it, anyway?” Even Declan’s keen lawyer mind couldn’t make sense of it.
That made two of us.
Which didn’t keep me from trying.
I tapped a f
inger to the cover of the cookbook, where the photo had been tucked. “I had this cookbook in California,” I said.
“So it’s one of the books Meghan knew you had.”
“And one of the books she knew, or at least could have figured, that I’d taken with me when I walked out of her house that night.”
Careful to stay far away from Dolly, who I was convinced could snoop even through a cascade of tears, I propped the cookbook under my arm and headed for my office. Once Declan and I were seated in there and the door was closed behind us, we began our search.
Page by page, we went through the cookbook.
“No more photographs,” Declan commented when we were about halfway through.
“No anything,” I grumbled.
At least until I turned to a page that featured a recipe for spaghetti and strawberries. Not that I don’t love both, but, let’s face it, the sound of the combination is chill-inducing.
A single piece of folded paper fluttered out of the book and floated to the floor.
“What is it?” My question bumped out between the furious beats of my heart, and when Declan unfolded the paper and didn’t answer, I stood up and went to stand behind him so I could peer over his shoulder.
“It’s paperwork on a divorce from the great state of Texas,” he said. “The two parties are Benito Gallo and Tina Moretti.”
Not that I didn’t believe him, but I took the paper out of Declan’s hands for a better look.
“Why would Meghan be so desperate to get the papers for a divorce that everyone in the world knows about?” I asked no one in particular.
Neither Declan nor I had the chance to answer.
My phone rang, and when I saw Spencer’s number come up on the screen, I answered.
“What’s up?” I asked him, and because it felt so weird to talk to the kid while I was holding the paper that dissolved his parents’ marriage, I set the paper down on the desk. “What are you up to?”
“Up to finding out answers, that’s what I’m up to.” Spencer’s voice was tight with excitement. “I got a lot to tell you, Laurel. You know, detective to detective.”
I was afraid to ask. “Can it wait until morning?”
“I don’t think so, it’s pretty important. I just found out—”
Spencer grumbled a word he shouldn’t have used.
“Somebody’s at the door.” From the way his voice bounced along, I could tell he was already walking to answer it. “Just hold on a minute.”
I can’t say why an alarm every bit as demanding and discordant as the Terminal’s smoke alarm went off inside my head. I know only that the next thing I knew, I was yelling into my phone.
“Let Wilma answer the door!”
“Wilma went out to get us some snacks. Hold on.”
The sound was suddenly muffled; Spencer had taken the phone away from his ear, maybe tucked it in his pocket.
Still, I heard him say, “Oh, it’s you,” like it was the most natural thing in the world. At least until the panic kicked in and he yelled, “Hey, stop that! Let me go!”
“Spencer! Spencer!”
I didn’t get an answer.
In fact, the only thing I could hear was the kid’s voice coming from what sounded like far away when he screamed, “Ostrich! Ostrich!”
Chapter 20
“Kidnapped? What do you mean, kidnapped?”
To me, there didn’t seem all that many ways to explain it, but I tried. “Kidnapped, Gus. As in, taken against his free will. I was talking to Spencer on the phone and someone came to the door of the hotel room and the next thing I knew, he was in trouble.”
“And you could tell this, how?”
“Because he yelled ‘Ostrich!’” I screeched my frustration and even though Declan was driving and he knew perfectly well how to get to Austintown, I pointed at the next turn to indicate the way. “Never mind why it matters, Gus. Trust me, it does. Ostrich is a kind of code word. It’s what Spencer told me he was going to say if he ever got in trouble.”
“And you think he’s in trouble.”
“I think someone came to the door of that hotel room and either took Spencer, or . . .” I had to swallow before I could even say it. “Or did something to him.”
“I’ll get a car right over there,” Gus told me, his voice more animated than I’d ever heard it. “And I’ll be there in a couple minutes. Are you—”
“Almost there.” We barreled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, or at least we barreled as much as the wise and careful attorney driving the car knew he could get away with. Even before Declan had the car in park, I punched open the door and headed inside.
I had just turned into the hallway where Wilma and Spencer’s rooms were located when I saw her walk up to the door, a bag of groceries in each hand.
“Don’t touch anything!” I don’t know why I thought this was important. Maybe it came from too many hours of watching cop shows in front of the TV.
Wilma had always been unflappable, even in the face of Meghan’s sometimes over-the-top household demands. This time was no exception. She juggled the bags to get her swipe key out of her purse.
“What are you doing here, Laurel?” she asked.
“Don’t touch anything!” I couldn’t be any clearer, but just in case, I closed in on her and snatched the key from her hand. “The cops are on their way.”
Awareness washed over her like a wave, so strong and so cold, I could see the effects it left in its wake.
First one, then the other, of the grocery bags dropped to the floor.
So did Wilma’s purse.
Her cheeks got chalky.
“Please! Don’t tell me. Not . . . not Spencer!”
“I don’t know. Not for sure. But the cops are almost here. I think we need to let them take a look at things before we go into the room and touch anything.”
We didn’t have to wait long.
No sooner did Declan come into the hotel, than a couple of Hubbard cops joined us. They were followed by two of Austintown’s finest, and finally, by Gus, who had the hotel manager with him. Gus was wearing bright red shorts and a T-shirt (a little snug over the tummy) with a picture of Tweety Bird on it.
I had never thought of him as the Tweety Bird type.
“Someone, please tell me.” We backed out of the way so the cops could get the room open, and Wilma slumped against the wall, her hands clutched at her waist and her mouth twisted. “Tell me, please, what is going on?”
“We’re going to know really soon,” I promised her. I put one hand on her shoulder and held my breath when the cops walked into the room.
“Clear,” I heard one of them call out, and let go of the breath I was holding.
Spencer wasn’t there. Spencer wasn’t lying there hurt.
By now, people up and down the hallway were outside their rooms, and Gus stepped into the hallway. “It’s fine! Nothing to worry about,” he assured them. “We’d like all of you to stay in your rooms. Unless somebody can tell me something about the kid who was staying here?”
“You mean that noisy kid playing some kind of game? Calling out ‘Ostrich! Ostrich!’?”
“Did you see him leave?” Gus asked.
The guy shook his head. “By the time I came out in the hallway to tell the manager to get things under control, there was no sign of anybody.”
One by one, the room doors shut. Gus put a hand on my elbow. “We’re going to process the room. You know, check for fingerprints and such.”
“No sign of Spencer?” I asked him.
“No. The manager said you three can wait in the lobby.” He walked me that way. “I’ll have an officer stay with you and that way if any of you gets a call from Spencer or thinks of anything or—”
“Wait!” I stopped so fast that behind me, Declan slammed into me. I wo
uld have hit the floor if he didn’t loop an arm around my waist. Once I was back on my feet, I closed in on Gus, my phone in my hands.
“I know where he is,” I said.
“Spencer? You know—”
“Well, not exactly. Not yet. But I know how to find him.”
* * *
• • •
IT WAS SO easy, it was almost funny. Or at least it would have been funny if I wasn’t so worried about Spencer.
What did he know that had made him a target?
Who thought he was a liability?
And would we find the kid there when we followed the Place My Pals app?
Or had the kidnapper come to his (or her) senses, gotten rid of Spencer’s phone, and taken the kid to parts unknown?
In the back of the squad car with its lights flashing and its siren blaring, I reached over and grabbed Declan’s hand.
“We’ve got this,” he told me. “Don’t worry.”
“But what if—”
“Spencer’s lucky you’re looking out for him.”
“And I’m lucky . . .” The words wedged behind the ball of emotion in my throat. “Thanks for helping.”
“You mean with waiting tables?”
“I mean with everything. With waiting tables and figuring out mysteries and even with the dead tomatoes.”
He slid me a look. “I ordered more.”
“Tomato plants?” I realized it was something I’d been meaning to do and never had the time. “Will you make sure I don’t kill them?”
“You are going to grow the best tomatoes in Ohio.” He patted my hand. “And I’m going to be right there with you picking them.”
“Are you two done?” From the front passenger seat, Gus grumbled. “We’re on a case here, people, we’re not supposed to be talking hearts and flowers.”
“It’s actually vegetables,” I pointed out.
“And we’re actually getting close.” He had my phone, looking at the map displayed on the Place My Pals screen, and he waggled the phone at me. “You sure this Pal thing is going to show us where the kid is?”